


Duty Calls.

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Patrician & Clerk [20]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Character Study, Class Differences, Complicated Relationships, Difficult Decisions, Duty, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, Growing Old, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Pain, Retirement, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 14:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17664104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: In the aftermath of some complicated, but quite necessary discussions, Drumknott comes to Vimes and speaks to him man-to-man.





	Duty Calls.

“Commander Vimes,” Vetinari says quietly, and Vimes groans quietly as he tips his head back against the pillows on his bed, looking at the Patrician as he enters his hospital room, which is airy and warm. Mossy Lawn has made an excellent shape of the Lady Sybil Free Hospital, and Vimes is almost comfortable in his hospital bed.

Sybil is downstairs, getting him something to eat from the canteen – she’d been all but tearful when she’d arrived, although she’d done her best to hide exactly how upset she’d been from Young Sam, and as for Sam…

The boy is nearly twelve now. He’ll be a young man in his own right, before long, and before he’d followed Sybil downstairs, he’d looked at Vimes very, very seriously. It’s very odd, to look into a boy’s face and see elements of your own face looking back at you, elements of your wife’s face, even seeing bits and pieces of aunts and uncles, of portraits on the walls of the Ramkin Estate…

“Dad,” Sam had said seriously, and he’d touched Vimes’ hand, _squeezed_ it. “You can’t— Dad, you can’t _do_ this anymore.” And he’d spoken so _sternly_ , too, and what a thing _that_ is, hearing the voice Vimes uses himself, high and not quite settled in, but the same tone, the same sort of voice. “You need to slow down.”

“I keep slowing down, son,” Vimes had said, with a small smile, and Sam had just shaken his head.

“Dad, I’m _serious_. If you died on the job, Mum would… You need to be more careful, you can’t just run into things and nearly get _killed_. You need to step back from the job.” And his voice had cracked, and Vimes had felt the thickness in his chest, had dragged Sam close to him and ignored the pain from the wound in his side, held him tightly.

“I will, love,” he’d murmured against Sam’s brow. “I will.”

And it had been a lie, hadn’t it?

He thinks of the job today, thinks of how quickly he’d made the decision to jump, and take the bastard on before he could get to the fuses. How many people would have died, if he’d let Lackerty get to it? Twenty? Thirty? He couldn’t have forgiven himself, if he hadn’t jumped in to fight Lackerty off, if he’d hesitated…

And now he’s made a promise to Sam he knows that he would like to keep. He’d like to be able to promise the boy he’ll never die on the job, that he’ll keep back from the dangerous situations, and _mean_ it, but… He can’t promise that. He can’t choose _himself_ , over the city, over innocent people.

He wishes he could, sometimes.

Vimes sighs, and when he looks up, he sees Lord Vetinari stepping slowly into the room, leaning on his cane as he moves inside, moving toward the visitor’s chair beside him. He moves as he has always moved – or has for the past fifteen years, no, closer to _twenty years_ , since the incident with the Gonne. Graceful, smooth, with a lean on his cane…

He’s older than Vimes is. Vimes knows this. He _knows_ it. Vetinari is into his sixties now, and it barely shows in his face. His hair, Vimes thinks, is greyer than it was, a little more of the dignified silver showing at his temples, but that’s all. No stiffness in the joints, no more lines on his face…

Vimes _feels_ old.

Oh, not decrepit, no, but he feels the ache in his bones more and more as he gets up in the mornings, can’t run as far as he used to, puts on more weight, just… Slows down. He’s slowing down, whether he likes it or not.

“Where’s your man?” Vimes asks, and the Patrician’s icy blue eyes flit to meet his gaze. The fact of the question stands on the air between them, the implication of the phrasing plain to both of them. Drumknott _is_ Vetinari’s man, through-and-through, and they both know this, both know…

“He’s downstairs,” Vetinari says quietly. “When I last saw him, Lady Sybil was grasping one of his hands rather tightly.”

“He show the pain?” Vimes asks, with humour he doesn’t feel that up for.

“He is the image of composure,” Vetinari replies. Vetinari’s gaze remains on Vimes’ face, and Vimes is aware, in this moment, that this is… _different_. There’s no reason for Vetinari to have come in for him, right now, no reason for him to _need_ to talk to him – there are no great schemes afoot, nothing big.

Just a mad man with a bomb, and another mad man who stopped him setting it off.

 _This is serious_ , Vetinari’s face says. His mouth says, “Doctor Lawn says you were very lucky. That you will be resting for quite some time.”

“Mm,” Vimes grunts, non-committally.

“Sybil asked me,” Vetinari says, and Vimes’ head shoots toward him with a quick movement, “to speak with you.” _Sybil_. He doesn’t believe he has ever heard Vetinari refer to Sybil by her first name only – she has only ever been _Lady Sybil_. Certainly, he knows that Vetinari calls her Sybil, when the two of them take their little teas together, just as she calls him Havelock, but… _Sybil asked me_.

Good gods. It _is_ —

“Did she?” Vimes asks, woodenly. There’s something desperately terrifying, about the idea of Lord Vetinari, Lord Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician, the Tyrant, sitting beside him, calling his wife _Sybil_ , talking to him… Like an equal. It’s somehow much more terrifying than any of the other terrors Vimes has had today, like nearly dying, nearly leaving Sybil a widow, lying to his son.

“About retirement, in fact,” Vetinari says.

“Oh, no—”

“Samuel,” Vetinari says, and Vimes stares at him, his mouth open. Never. Never, in all his life, _never_ — “I am not forcing you. I am not, in fact, even… Quietly implying a necessity, or anything similar. I merely wish to tell you that retirement is an option. You could retain some of your rights to Pseudopolis Yard, could remain in an educational capacity, even… In the meantime, I would suggest shortening your hours further, perhaps only working for half of the week. It is, of course, ultimately your decision.”

Vetinari speaks in quiet, measured tones, and for once, “your decision” doesn’t sound like a very dangerous challenge. It sounds… _Real_. Genuine. Vimes has never spoken to Vetinari before, and discovered that his language contains only one layer of frank meaning. It’s like looking out of the window and seeing that the rain is falling upwards.

“Carrot would take over the Watch,” Vimes says. Retirement. It had never seemed like a _thought_ , once upon a time. He had never considered it, never had it come up as even a passing thought – Watchmen didn’t _retire_. They died. Watchmen like _Sam Vimes_ , anyway, an alcoholic sod with no thought of anything, and then he had Sybil, and he had Young Sam, and he couldn’t risk dying in the same way, _wouldn’t_ , but—

Retirement.

It sounds so…

Final. _Retirement_. Colon is retired, now, but Vimes still sees him about, still sees him wandering into the watch-house of a Friday evening, getting Nobby to come for a drink with him. Colon, in clothes that actually _fit_ him, and yet seem strangely out-of-place on his body, which seemed to have been made more for a uniform than the other way around.

“Yes,” Vetinari says.

“I’ll think about it,” Vimes says. It hurts, to say it. He doesn’t know what he’d be, if he wasn’t a copper. What would he be left with, then? _Duke_. _Knight_. He doesn’t care about that. But… Father. Husband. “I’ll think about it,” he repeats, hearing that his voice is hoarse. He wishes it was easier, this sort of thing. He wishes the decisions were made for him, sometimes, wishes…

Vetinari gives a neat inclination of his head.

“Havelock,” Vimes says, because he doesn’t think he’s ever said it before. He’s _said_ Vetinari’s name, yes, but always in a sardonic fashion, and always the whole name together. He’s never said his first name, on its own, felt the three syllables in his mouth. They’re the wrong three syllables. _Patrician_ just sounds more like him.

“Yes?” Vetinari asks.

“Are _you_ going to retire?”

For just a moment, Vetinari’s expression is studiously blank, and then he tilts his head back just slightly. Vimes reads the look in his eyes, the quiet understanding, and he almost imagines it read out in Vetinari’s voice: _Ah, I see. I have attempted to be friendly with **you** , and now you are returning the favour. How droll_.

Vetinari’s gaze flits toward the door, and then he looks back to Vimes.

“You and I,” he says, slowly, “have developed a _unique_ relationship in the past years. Would you not say?”

“Yes,” Vimes says. He isn’t sure where this is going, and the wound in his belly is _aching_ , the pain near-constant, and distracting him.  “I suppose I would.”

“We have an understanding.”

“Yes.”

“Envisage, then, what would happen, were I to retire,” Vetinari says. “Were I to abdicate, perhaps, and step down.”

The chaos appears before Vimes’ inner eye fully formed, and he leans back in his bed, exhaling. “I suppose… I suppose I thought,” he says, not looking at Vetinari, and instead looking at the door of the hospital room, “that even if you didn’t retire, perhaps. Perhaps Vincent Wilkinson might, or Stoker Blake… I’m sure there are others I don’t know about. Perhaps that’s stupid of me, but it made sense to me, the idea of Wilkinson and his young man, Faigle, settling down somewhere else. You know, away from all the chaos in the city.”

“Drumknott has posed a similar thought to me,” Vetinari says quietly. “And I would be lying to you, were I to say the thought had never crossed my own mind.” Drumknott. _Drumknott_. That funny little man, who is so _loyal_ to Vetinari that it’s maddening, who seems to actually be able to predict the man’s thoughts, who seems to move in perfect two-step with him, suggested it…

“But?” Vimes asks.

“But what? I have a higher duty, to the city, to Ankh-Morpork. So too does Drumknott.”

“Drumknott’s duty is to you,” Vimes says. “Not Ankh-Morpork.”

“Were you to ask him,” Vetinari replies smoothly, with a very slight smile[1], “he would say the two are one and the same.”

“You want _me_ to retire,” Vimes says. “Why are you different, _Havelock_?”

“You know why, Samuel,” Vetinari replies, and Vimes does. He _does_. As soon as the Patrician is gone, and the new one takes his place, there will be a period of chaos, of unrest, of… _Upheaval_. There always is, even in the smoothest of transitions, and of course, Vetinari wants to put that off for as long as possible. “When I die, thus will the change occur. That is only natural, I feel.”

“I’m surprised you’re letting it come to that,” Vimes mutters. He wishes he could cross his arms over his chest, but lifting his arm too high currently leads his whole torso to scream in agony, and actually crossing the two arms over one another, he thinks, would be more than could be ignored.

There is a moment’s silence, and he glances to Vetinari, who is watching him… _cautiously_. “What do you mean?” he asks quietly. It is not the voice of someone asking, really, _what do you mean?_ It is the voice of a man who knows exactly what you mean, but doesn’t really want to consider it.

Vimes hesitates.

“Well,” he says. “Just… You know, all those rumours about you being a vampire. I know that they’re _nonsense_ , but that’d be a solution for you, wouldn’t it? No aging, no death, just… Doing your duty.”

Vetinari’s expression is so still as to be frozen. Vimes can’t help the feeling that, somehow, he has said something wrong, and Vetinari looks at him for a long few moments, his gaze inhumanly still, never shifting. One could believe him a vampire, with how still he can be, in moments like these.

Finally, he asks, “Is that what you would do, in my position?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say,” Vimes mutters, looking at the white sheets tangled around his aching knees. “Just… You know, you just said you won’t retire, because of your duty to Ankh-Morpork. Didn’t seem like that much of a stretch for you to refuse to die and all.”

“I see,” Vetinari says. The room feels… Colder. Vimes is certain, now, that he’s said the wrong thing, but what…? “Thank you, Vimes. For your candour.” _Back to Vimes, is it?_ he almost asks, but he stops himself as the door is opened, and he smiles at Sybil as she comes forward, Young Sam in her wake.

“Hello, Mr Drumknott,” Vimes says. The small figure in the corridor takes a step forward, standing in the doorway, and he looks down at Vimes from behind his glasses. Vetinari might not be showing his age, but Drumknott is – he’s closer to forty now than thirty, and, to Vimes’ surprise whenever he sees him, alongside the show of wrinkles at his forehead from a continuously furrowed brow, Drumknott has laughter lines around his mouth and his eyes.

“Hello, your excellency,” Drumknott says quietly, with his expected delicacy. “Do get well soon.”

“Thank you,” Vimes says, watching as Vetinari steps aside, letting Sybil back sit down in the chair. “Thank you for coming to see me, lord.”

“Merely on our way to another appointment, your excellency,” Vetinari says airily, but he glances back to Vimes as he takes toward the door, and the two of them exchange a curt nod. Vetinari makes his way into the corridor, and Vimes sees Drumknott frown for a moment, looking at the Patrician, then glance back toward Vimes.

It’s a moment’s hesitation.

Within the second, Drumknott is following Vetinari down the corridor, and Vimes puts out his hand. Sybil grasps hold of it, tightly, and when he feels a quiet _click_ of a bone, he smiles through the pain.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Mossy lets him go home to convalesce. The stairs are too much for him, so Sybil has one of the living rooms downstairs made up as their bedroom, and they sleep that night with the continuous threat of one of the elderly dragons clambering into bed with them, but Vimes can’t quite bring himself to mind.

When one of them _does_ crawl up into the bed, it is when Vimes is unsuccessfully trying to do the crossword in the paper at a little past ten o’clock, and Vimes strokes her back absently, hearing the low rumble of delight as she relaxes in her place.

He hears the doorbell, and he hears Wilikins’ bootsteps across the floor in the corridor as he moves across the floor. He hears the door open, but he neither hears Wilkins’ delicate tones nor the voice of the visitor, and when Wilikins comes to the door and knocks, Vimes doesn’t yet bother to get up from bed.

“Who is it, Wilikins?” he asks, and the door opens. Wilikins looks at Vimes very seriously, with only a slightly disapproving glance at the sleeping body of Mabelline Godfrey Heavens the Second beside him. No one else is home, Vimes is aware – Young Sam is in classes on the other side of the city, and Sybil is at the Sunshine Sanctuary.

“It is Mr Drumknott, sir, the Patrician’s clerk. He would like to speak with you.” Vimes frowns, getting to his feet, and he reluctantly allows Wilkins to help him into his dressing gown[2] before drawing on his slippers.

“Is the Patrician alright?” he asks.

“I don’t know, sir,” Wilikins says. He hesitates only for a moment before he says, “Mr Drumknott made no mention of the Patrician, my lord. He did seem… somewhat vexed.”

“ _Vexed_?” Vimes repeats. If Wilikins is describing a man as _vexed_ , he must be downright furious, and Vimes moves out into the corridor, letting Wilikins show him into the drawing room, where Drumknott – little, composed Rufus Drumknott – is pacing.

Vimes is aware that he paces, when annoyed. Sybil has pointed it out to him before: pacing is the realm of the _angry_ man more than the anxious one, as he needs to move to get out the excess energy, that he doesn’t throw something, and smash it. Drumknott looks very much like he would like to smash something right now, his surprisingly-rough hands clenched tightly at his sides.

When Vimes enters, he stops, raising his chin.

“Thank you, Wilikins,” Vimes says pointedly, and the butler scowls just slightly before he goes to the door, closing it with a click. “Mr Drumknott, is—”

“I would like to say, immediately and forthrightly,” Drumknott says, his voice sharp and hard and brittle, “that I am _not_ here in my professional capacity as Lord Vetinari’s clerk.” It occurs to Vimes that he has never heard Drumknott speak above a low murmur before. Certainly, he has heard _Howard Faigle_ speak normally, with his posh accent and his neat elocution, but Drumknott has a city boy’s accent, cleaned up around the edges, but still reminiscent of the street he grew up on, out in Dimwell.

“Really?” Vimes asks, his eyebrows raising as he puts his hands in the pockets of his dressing down. “Alright.”

“I might warn you, as well,” Drumknott says, advancing on Vimes and looking much bigger than he ordinarily does, although still… _Compact_ , “that I _do not_ believe I will be speaking to you in the manner that befits your station as Duke.”

“That’s fine with me,” Vimes says, feeling his eyebrows raising even higher. “What seems to be the problem?”

“ _You_ ,” Drumknott says, and the look he turns on Vimes could burn cities. Bollocks to cities - the incandescent fury that burns behind his glasses could raze _continents_.  “How _dare_ you?”

Vimes stares at the little secretary. He has seen Rufus Drumknott angry only once before – it had been years and years ago, when he hadn’t even been seventeen yet, and had gotten in an altercation at Unseen University Library, because someone had threatened to have a go at the Librarian. _That_ Drumknott had cooled off a bit, but his lip was still split from the fight, and he was still a little pissed off.

 _This_ Drumknott—

He’s _incensed_.

“How dare I?” Vimes repeats blankly.

“You _bastard_ ,” Drumknott snaps, and Vimes leans back at the force of the word, too surprised to be angry, or even indignant. “Of all the stupid, ungrateful, _selfish_ things to say, of all— Of _all_ people, I would have thought _you_ would have more sense, and you’re just as bad as the rest of them! You—”

Drumknott is shouting, and his cheeks are brightly red: his eyes are watering just slightly, and Vimes watches in fascinated, distant horror as he takes off his glasses, setting them hard on the table. He doesn’t need the glasses to see – Drumknott knows this, and Vimes knows it, but it isn’t _said_ , and it isn’t _referenced_. Certainly, Drumknott doesn’t take his glasses off to _shout_ at someone.

Vimes is only recently aware that Drumknott is _able_ to shout.

“Drumknott,” Vimes says, in a tone he hopes is gentle, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

All at once, Drumknott’s rage crumples inwards. It’s like watching a paper tower getting the air sucked out of it: he bends forward, his clenched fists coming up against his face, and Vimes hears the unmistakable sound of a sob, and then he takes in a ragged breath. Vimes, heart panging, reaches out to touch his shoulder, but Drumknott’s hand moves so fast that Vimes can barely _see_ it; one of his rough hands clenching tightly around his wrist and twisting upward. Vimes hisses in pain, but Drumknott does not wrench so far as to pull the arm away from Vimes’ injured chest.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Drumknott hisses. His eyes are red-rimmed, and there are tears on his cheeks. “Don’t you _dare_ touch me.” Twenty years, now, serving an Assassin; twenty years, working alongside the Dark Clerks[3]; twenty years, under Vetinari. Twenty years has made Drumknott’s grip deceptively strong, his reflexes astonishingly fast, and Vimes doesn’t doubt, in this moment, that the little secretary in front of him could kill a man.

How many men _has_ he killed?

“Alright,” Vimes says softly, spreading his other hand as if calming a spooked horse. “Alright.” Drumknott’s hand opens, letting Vimes free, and Vimes looks at him, looks at him as he breathes heavily, his chest rising and falling under his suit. He’s still crying. He doesn’t see to be able to stop, and Vimes can see his throat shifting as he pants, trying not to outright _wail_.

“I can’t,” he says, opening a scarred hand and then closing it again. “I can’t _talk_ to anybody, and I can’t— I can’t _do_ anything. And _you_ …” Drumknott turns a look of venomous ire on him once more, and then says, “Why would you say that to him? How could you _do_ that? Don’t you know how much he _cares_ about your opinion? Don’t you _know_?”

“Who?” Vimes asks. “Vetinari?”

Drumknott releases a growl of frustration, and he paces away from Vimes, his boots scarcely making a sound on the tiled floor despite the heaviness of his steps. “ _Yes_ ,” he snaps, when he paces back. “ _Yes_ , Vetinari, Vetinari, Havelock Vetinari! Who else!?”

“He doesn’t care that much about my opinions, usually,” Vimes says, and Drumknott _scoffs_.

“You f—” Drumknott stops, and Vimes watches as his hand reaches up, the palm wiping over his lip as if to wipe something away. There are some things he can’t let himself say, let himself do, even when he _is_ losing his temper, apparently. His expression is very hard when he looks at Vimes again, and his tearful eyes somehow make the look even harder. “That— This _nonsense_ ,” Drumknott says, “about becoming a vampire. What would _possess_ you?”

He doesn’t just sound angry as he looks at Vimes. He sounds… _desperate_. Beseeching, pleading. He sounds _betrayed_.

“I don’t… It’s not like I was giving the man _advice_ ,” Vimes replies, irritable now that understanding is finally dawning, that Vetinari’s clerk should come and lose his temper over _this_ , just talk in a hospital room. “It just seemed like the sort of thing he would come up with—”

“And _you_ said,” Drumknott whispers, and somehow, the whisper is a lot more upsetting than the shouting, “that it would be his _duty_.” Drumknott takes a slow, serpentine step closer to Vimes, his jaw set, his expression… Vimes doesn’t want to think about this expression. He’s seen it on Vetinari’s face, almost exactly: this is the one he wears in the face of what he thinks is _real_ injustice, and it never bodes well. “How can you—”

And once again, the rage cracks. Crumbles. Drumknott lets out the most pitiful noise Vimes has ever heard from a man, and he exhales hard.

“We can’t… _retire_ , you know,” Drumknott says. “We can’t do that. I suggested it, even though I knew we couldn’t, because I wanted him to be able to… to refuse. I wanted him to feel like we’d _discussed_ it, even though we couldn’t actually— Do you understand?”

 _No_ , Vimes almost says. _That sounds mad_.

“And,” Drumknott continues, because the question was quite rhetorical, “we know what will happen, after he dies. How things will go. There are plans in place.”

“Are there?”

“And _you_ ,” Drumknott says, with all the injustice he can back into the syllable, “ _you_ … You, Sam Vimes, who thinks he’s so much _better_ than anyone else, who spent twenty years in the bottom of a bloody Bearhugger bottle before you decided to give a damn—” Vimes feels himself bristle, but Drumknott goes on, “ _you_ just… You just say to him, just like that, _more_ than the fact that he can’t retire, because he thinks retiring would mean he’d be abandoning his post, means he’d be shirking his duty… You effectively say to him that he can’t even have the pleasure of _dying_.”

Vimes’ anger is still present, still burning under his skin, but that— That gives him pause. Drumknott is bent slightly over again, his knuckles pressed so hard against his forehead that Vimes can see them leaving slight marks in the skin. He reaches out again, touching Drumknott’s shoulder, and Drumknott doesn’t lash out at him this time, just lets Vimes slowly push him to sit down in one of the chairs.

Vimes stays standing.

“It’s just so _selfish_ ,” Drumknott whispers, his elbows against his knees, his nose buried against the heels of his hands. “Everybody in Ankh-Morpork has themselves convinced that he’s some sort of monster, and they call him a tyrant and a despot, and act like he doesn’t _care_ , and it’s just so— Because if he didn’t _care_ , he wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t do what he does – I wouldn’t do it with him! He cares so much that I think it _hurts_ him. And he can’t retire, and he can’t be seen to relax or even take a second to breathe, and everyone subtly implies that he’s not human, and the fact is that he isn’t _allowed_ to be human, because no one will let him. He doesn’t _sleep_. He sleeps for two hours a night, and I can’t tell anymore if it’s because he really doesn’t need it, or because it’s all the time he’ll let himself _waste_ ; he can only ever let himself relax if it’s under the guise of work, or if it’s the little recovery his body _needs_ ; people even act like it’s something horrible just for him to have a _dog_.

“And after all that, after all he’s done for this city, after all the _scars_ he’s got on his body, all the things he’s given up, all the _devotion_ he’s put into serving her citizens, even though most of them don’t even _deserve_ it, he should get to die. He should be able to be… _peaceful_ , and _rest_.” Drumknott heaves in an ugly breath, and he runs a hand roughly through his neatly coiffed hair, offsetting its perfectly combed order. “Isn’t it enough, that he should give up his life for Ankh-Morpork? How can you _look_ at him, Vimes? How can you look at him and say, oh, that isn’t enough! You should give up your death, as well!”

Vimes stares down at Drumknott, unable to make his mouth work. There’s an uncomfortable, twisted snarl of feeling in his chest as he looks at the little clerk, see how _agonised_ he looks.

“Why don’t _you_ become a bloody vampire?” Drumknott asks, spitting out the question like it’s a curse. “Why don’t you become a zombie, or a vampire, or become some bloody _lich_? Is that what you want? Do you want to live forever, Vimes? Running back and forth around the city, never taking a _moment_ , never—”

“No,” Vimes says, his voice a little hoarse. Drumknott drops back against the chair’s back. He looks exhausted.

“Then why should he?” he asks in little more than a whisper.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Vimes says. “I didn’t— I wasn’t _thinking_ about—”

“How he felt?” Drumknott breaks in. “No. Why would you? Why would anyone?”

The bitterness is so thick in his voice that it makes Vimes _ache_ , and he is aware, he thinks for the first time, of exactly how young Drumknott is. He’s been with Vetinari, as his clerk, for, what, seventeen, eighteen years? And the _other_ thing, Vimes doesn’t even know how long that’s been running, couldn’t begin to guess.

But the entire time, regardless, he’s been living, Vimes can only assume, with the knowledge that he’ll probably outlive the Patrician. Even without the constant threat of Vetinari being _killed_ , the age difference alone assures that.

“I look at him sometimes,” Drumknott says, “and I just wish I could…” He trails off. His gaze is focused on some invisible point in the middle distance.

“He going to do it?” Vimes asks softly.

“No,” Drumknott says. “No, he couldn’t. It would be too… Unpredictable. Management of the bloodlust, and the intensity of the obsession, and— And as vampires get older, they’re different. You met Dragon King of Arms.” He sighs, rubbing ineffectually at one of his cheeks with his hand. “But he feels guilty. For _not_ doing it. And he…”

Drumknott swallows. “It’s not fair,” he mutters. “I hope sometimes that whatever it is, whoever it is, that I die first. And I know that that’s— I know that it’s selfish of me, to want that, but frankly, Vimes, I’ve never been a selfish man, and I think I— I think I deserve it, this once. Just to _think_ it. Just to want it, even though it won’t happen like that.”

“Gods,” Vimes says. He doesn’t mean to. He doesn’t mean to say anything, exactly, doesn’t know _what_ to say in response to that, to a man that young talking so frankly, so plainly, about dying before a man twenty years his senior, and then feeling— _Guilty_ for it. Imagine that. Imagine feeling _selfish_ , for hoping… Vimes sits heavily down beside Drumknott on the little couch, and he puts his arm, very heavily, on the younger man’s shoulder. Drumknott doesn’t look at him. His gaze is pointed at the floor, his hands only in loose fists where they rest on his knees, and he is trembling slightly. _Gods_.

It’s wrong.

It’s _wrong_. He shouldn’t be involved in this at all, least of all involved with _Vetinari_ , shouldn’t feel so damned loyal to him that he treats the idea of them dying as a package arrangement, shouldn’t—

 _It’s not fair_. Too bloody right.

“You wouldn’t give it up for anything, would you,” he asks, powerlessly.

Drumknott stares at the floor.

“Yes,” he says, finally. “If… If it was what the city needed, I would. He would do the same.” There’s no resignation in his voice, no hesitation, no anger. He says it dutifully, with complete and utter faith in the words.

For a second, Vimes is angry.

The anger is familiar ground, and he grabs hold of it, but it is already slipping away from him as he remembers the promise he’d made to Young Sam yesterday morning, knowing he probably couldn’t keep it.

“What’s it like?” Drumknott asks softly.

“What’s what like?”

“This,” Drumknott says, with a vague gesture at the room around them. This is the drawing room they actually _live_ in, that they actually spend time together in, as a family – there’s a piano in the corner, with a few boardgames stacked on the top, and some comfortable chairs, but that’s all, really.

“You live in the _Palace_ , lad, I—” He reads in Drumknott’s face a kind of desperate emotion, and he glances at the drawing room around them. He looks at the books on the bookshelf, the ones kept easily to hand – a mix of all their books, none of them kept in the library. Sybil’s many manuals and dictionaries on dragon physiology; Vimes’ books about escapology and a few detective novels and a few biographies; Young Sam’s books, which are a mix of the both, on slightly different subjects. He looks to the wall, where several iconographs are framed, of him and Sybil and Young Sam, at one thing or another. He looks back to the boardgames, at the half-shuffled decks of cards, some of them singed from overly curious dragons. “Oh,” he says, hollowly.

Drumknott exhales, and he reaches into his pocket, removing a handkerchief and daubing at his eyes and at his cheeks. It’s an almost mechanical process, the way that he folds the handkerchief back away, combing his hair back into place with his fingers, reaching with a violently shaking hand for his glasses, and putting them back on.

“I’m sorry, your excellency,” Drumknott says primly, in a thick voice that is only slightly tremulous. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

 _Back to your excellency, are we?_ Vimes almost asks. “Does he know you’re here?” he asks instead.

“I shouted at him,” Drumknott mutters, with a loud sigh. “I don’t do that very often. It isn’t… It isn’t like you and the Lady Sybil, or like a… There are rules. There are matters of propriety to be considered. I shouted at him, and I left, and then I felt very guilty, and then I felt more angry, so I came here to shout at you instead.” A muscle twitches in Drumknott’s jaw. “It was very childish of me,” he mutters.

“You’re joking, right?” Vimes asks softly. “I wish I had your damned restraint.” Drumknott’s lips twitch into a very wan smile, but it only lasts a second or two. “Why’d you shout at _him_?” Vimes asks.

“I shouldn’t have said any of this,” Drumknott says dully.

“In for a penny,” Vimes replies, and Drumknott looks at his knees.

“He said—” Drumknott exhales. “He said he was glad that—” Drumknott hesitates for a moment, and then continues, “that the next Patrician would have me as a guiding hand. I nearly threw a vase at his head.” The mental image that assaults Vimes’ consciousness soothes the twisting monster of powerless anxiety in his belly for a second. Of Drumknott, furious, throwing a vase at the Patrician…

“But your duty is to Ankh-Morpork, isn’t it?” Vimes asks, slowly. “Even if he dies—”

“When Lord Vetinari dies, I’m done,” Drumknott says cleanly, firmly.

“ _Done_?” Vimes repeats, and Drumknott turns to look at him. In his eyes, which are still slightly puffy, he reads a very cleanly, neatly written line of meaning. He could probably read it aloud, in Drumknott’s voice, as he had Vetinari’s. He doesn’t want to.

“Done,” Drumknott confirms softly.

There is an abrupt knock at the front door, hurried and accompanying the frenzied ring of the doorbell, and Drumknott gets to his feet, walking across the room with Vimes at his heels. Wilikins opens the door, and Nobby drops in, heaving in a breath.

“Commander Vimes, sir—” he begins hurriedly, and then his gaze alights on Drumknott. Drumknott is standing very still, his chin high, his expectation silently expectant, and Vimes watches as Nobby awkwardly skids to a stop on the smooth floor. “Oh. He’s… here.”

“Corporal Nobbs,” Drumknott says, with a steely note to his tone, “Commander Vimes is convalescing. He ought not be bothered with the petty concerns of the Watch in his absence.”

“N— Well, no, Mr Drumknott, but it was just that _you_ —”

“ _Me_ , Corporal Nobbs?” Drumknott repeats, cutting through Nobby’s voice like a guillotine through a Quirmian neck, and Nobby coughs.

“We was looking for you, sir, because—”

“And here I am, found,” Drumknott interrupts once more. “Why don’t you inform the nearest clacks tower of your discovery?” The _or else_ is silent, and Vimes watches as Nobby rushes out of the doors again, his bootsteps clattering up the path. Nobby is anxious around all sorts of people, being a natural coward (and with good reason), but there is a particular effect Drumknott has on him that few other people seem to have. Part of it, Vimes thinks, is that Drumknott isn’t so honestly _threatening_ to other people. Where Nobby is concerned, he has never bothered to hide his ire[4].

“He do that to embarrass you?” Vimes asks, thinking of Vetinari sounding the alarm, but Drumknott shakes his head.

“No,” he says quietly. “No, I imagine he was very worried.” The idea of Vetinari being _worried_ is a foreign one, but he can read in Drumknott’s face the _truth_ of it, see the shame in his features…

“What’s it like?” Vimes asks. Knowing Vetinari like that, _knowing_ him, so completely, so entirely… There’s no one else in the city, no one else on the Disc, that knows Vetinari like Drumknott does. Vetinari’s aunt died a few years back, and Lady Margolotta… Vimes wouldn’t pretend to know the ins and outs of that relationship, but he knows that it’s complicated, and that there’s a distance there. There’s no distance between Vetinari and Drumknott.

“I can’t imagine being without,” Drumknott says quietly. “But I confess, your excellency, I often imagine it being different. My… My thanks, for indulging me. I oughtn’t have— I do apologise. Your patience…” Drumknott exhales. “It wasn’t your fault. Merely that he does put a lot of stock by your opinion. You do know that, don’t you?”

“I do now,” Vimes says lowly. “You can come here whenever you want to scream and throw things. Two’s a party, with that sort of thing.” Drumknott looks at him for a moment, and then he smiles. It’s a small smile, genuinely warm.

“My thanks, Commander,” Drumknott says softly. “It is— I hope you understand that despite my… My outburst, I greatly admire your sense of duty. I admire… you, and I admire your work.”

“Even if I had to crawl out of the bottom of a bottle to do it?” Vimes asks. Drumknott’s expression doesn’t change. His father used to drink. Vimes knows that – a violent drunk, too. Drumknott’s body is marked all over, and it was like that long before he entered the Patrician’s service. He doesn’t like alcohol, Drumknott. Vimes knows that, too.

“I oughtn’t have said that,” Drumknott says.

“Because I’m a Duke and you’re a clerk?” Vimes asks. Drumknott looks at him for a long moment, his head tilting slightly to the side.

“Because it was cruel,” he says. He looks back to the door as Nobby comes up, and he exhales. “My thanks again, Commander. I do hope you take your convalescence seriously.”

“As anything,” Vimes promises, and Drumknott gives a stout nod of his head. You’d never even know he’d been crying, looking at his face. He’s not got a hair out of place, even. He watches as the door shuts closed, and he glances to Wilikins as he enters, his expression very grave.

“He was _shouting_ ,” Wilikins says lowly.

“I noticed that myself,” Vimes replies, in a casual voice, and he steps back across the parlour, to his bed, where Mabelline drags herself into his lap. It’s something to think about, and he drops the newspaper aside, concentrating on the little dragon as she purrs and wriggles her scaly body underneath his fingers.

And he sighs.

There’s nothing he can do to fix this. There’s nothing any of them can do – things are what they are, and the situation is what it is. Drumknott knew, Vimes knows, what he was in for, when he started out.

Of course, he muses as he lies on his tender side, that actually makes it worse.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

It is three years later that Vimes walks up the stairs to the Oblong Office for the last time. He’s retiring in a few weeks, for good. Figures that the Patrician would time it just right. He always had a sense for that sort of thing.

Lord Vetinari is still in his seat, his head bent at a slightly unnatural angle. His eyes are closed, as if in sleep, one hand still gripping at a knife.

“Your lordship,” he says to Patrician von Lipwig, who is very pale, and is leaning back against the wall, his hands gripped tightly in front of him.

“Commander Vimes,” Lipwig says quietly. “Thank you for coming.” As silent as a ghost, Drumknott leans up toward the Patrician’s ear, and murmurs something indistinguishable. Lipwig exhales, and then he says, “We can go to into the Council Chamber for now. Please.”

He leads the way down the corridor, but for just a moment, Vimes hangs back.

“How long do we have you for?” he asks.

Drumknott meets his gaze. Nothing shows in his face, which is a neutral mask, his brown eyes unreadable. You wouldn’t be able to tell, if he’d been crying.

“Commander?” he asks, feigning lack of understanding, but Vimes isn’t going to back down, not this time.

“How long?” Vimes repeats.

“A week,” Drumknott says cleanly, without feeling. He was going to be forty this year, Vimes muses distantly. Sybil was going to bake him a cake. “That should be sufficient.”

“Right,” Vimes says. This is the moment, he supposes, where a lot of people would – and a lot of people will, in the next few days – offer Drumknott their condolences. Vimes doesn’t. He doesn’t see the point, and he knows, in his heart of hearts, that Drumknott won’t either. “Come on, then. Duty calls.”

Drumknott’s head turns, and his gaze settles on the body of Lord Vetinari for just a moment. Vimes can’t read anything at all in that look, and he’s grateful for the fact.

“Indeed, Commander,” Drumknott murmurs, and they move out into the corridor together.

 

[1] It is the sort of smile, Vimes muses, that he has never seen on Havelock Vetinari’s face, and will likely never see again.

[2] This is, he would insist, due to the stiffness in his body and the difficulty in raising his arms, and _has nothing to do_ with the general toffs’ instinct to let somebody else dress him.

[3] Who are most certainly _not_ a myth, and it was Drumknott who told him so, albeit by not telling him anything.

[4] This is the only way Drumknott has discovered to keep Nobby from trying to pick his pocket.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). Requests always open.
> 
> I run a [Discworld Comm](https://onthedisc.dreamwidth.org/), and there's also [a Discord right here.](https://discord.gg/b8Z3ThH)


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